"Joel Tenebaum fights back with the help of leading internet lawyers" (Source: http://joelfightsback.com/)

Massachusetts student to pay $22,500 per shared song

Joel Tenebaum, a graduate student at
Boston University, is the nation’s second defendant to go to trial
against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on file
sharing charges. In July of 2009, his case went to federal court
where the judge ruled that the defendant pay $675,000 in damages to
the RIAA. The only other file sharing defendant to trial against the
RIAA was Jammie
Thomas-Rasset, who had to pay $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs
on Kazaa.

The Obama Administration, which recently asked five
former RIAA lawyers to serve in the Justice Department, is
supporting the verdict, stating that copyright infringement,
"creates a public harm that Congress is determined must be
deterred."

In lieu of the tension between the Chinese
Government and Google regarding the recent IP theft and
account hacking problems, it isn’t hard to see why the Obama
Administration is standing so firmly against copyright infringements.
Whether a defendant is sharing files or hacking into a corporation,
their act violated copyright laws, and failing to take action could
make the administration's policy look inconsistent.

Under the
copyright act, fines are determined by the judge and jury and can
range from $750 to $150,000 . The Justice Department defends its
ruling with the following statement.

The current damages range provides compensation for
copyright owners because, inter alia, there exist situations in which
actual damages are hard to quantify. Furthermore, in establishing the
range, Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of
users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where
many violators believe they will go unnoticed.

Tenebaum’s defense team is going back to work on $22,500
per-song ruling, in hopes of lowering the penalty to $750 per-song.